This past weekend I spent the unofficial beginning of summer at the Jersey Shore with my family at my parent’s beach house. Each morning my son rode his bike while my daughter pushed her baby doll in a stroller next to him as I pushed our beach cart full of “NeCeSsItiEs” up the block and a half to the beach. I couldn’t help thinking how much easier this seemed compared to the past few summers when I had to manage the beach cart and the kids in a wagon behind me. The morning of Memorial Day as my son and I were making our way up to the beach I hit a bump with the beach cart and the cart and all of its contents landed on the street. Four chairs, my beach bag, and enough sand toys for a small army scattered all over the street. My first instinct was to get my son Nicholas to stop riding his bike so that he would be safe while I picked everything back up, and then I began to collect all of our beach gear. As Nicholas and I started picking up the sand toys I noticed two young boys who were about high school age had watched the entire incident and just LooKeD at me and kept on walking. I stopped what I was doing and pointed them out to my son. I explained to him that someday he is going to be a “big boy” like they were and that he might see a Mommy who is having trouble like I was. I told him that I hoped that when he grows up he would… At that point Nicholas stopped me and finished the thought for me. He looked at me and said, “Mommy, I would help the Mommy pick everything up.”

Nicholas Memorial Day 2012

There are so many times as parents we get caught up in the busyness of the day-to-day routine that we forget to look for the moments that may have an ImPaCt on our children’s futures. I thought this teachable moment was going to show Nicholas what to do when he gets older, but what it also did was remind me that although I am SO hard on myself, I must be doing something right for my son to already know a lesson that those boys may have missed somewhere along the way.